Mayor de Blasio Drops Silent Bob, Eisenhower References

It’s probably not a surprise to anyone who’s seen his college yearbook photo, but it appears Bill de Blasio is a fan of the movie Clerks.

After a reporter asked the mayor about projected taxi medallion revenue in his budget plan at a press conference this afternoon, Mr. de Blasio dropped a reference to the character, who appeared in the Kevin Smith cult classic.

“First I want to thank you because, up until now, Dean Fuleihan had been the ‘Silent Bob’ of this press conference. So I’m glad to see that he has a chance to speak,” said Mr. de Blasio, directing Mr. Fuleihan, his budget director, to answer the question.

Silent Bob, along with his more talkative partner, Jay, are two fictional characters who spend most of their time selling marijuana in front of a convenience store in Clerks. The famous also appear in several other films by Mr. Smith.

At the same press conference, Mr. de Blasio also repeatedly referenced Dwight Eisenhower, the former president and famous World War II general, comparing one of his aide’s efforts to expand universal pre-K to the invasion of Nazi Germany in 1944.

“I want to turn to our deputy mayor, Richard Buery, who is spearheading our entire pre-K and after-school task force. He’s doing an extraordinary job bringing all of the city agencies together to achieve this historic goal. I often talk to my colleagues about the fact that we have to think in terms of other great efforts in history where government served as its finest, where amazing things were achieved. I talk about the Marshall Plan. I talk about the D-Day invasion,” he said.

“Given that we are planning to do something great and historic, I have now likened Richard Buery to being our General Eisenhower,” he continued. “General, please step forward. Address your troops.”

“Thank you for being the first person to recognize my natural physical resemblance to General Eisenhower,” Mr. Buery jested back as he took to the podium to speak.